A Separate Country (44 page)

Of course, that is exactly what they said about me when one of the most recognizable men of the late Confederacy stepped down from his carriage, cane in hand, and walked slowly through the crowd, which parted before him. I was recognized. I was always recognized.

Didn’t they know that I deserved their respect, not their ogling? I was not a gambler! I was a Christian, a man of God, saved. Who were these men staring at me, these thick-browed, loud men in dark suits speaking their barely literate twaddle? They were gamblers, of course, degenerates and drunks and fornicators. They were not there because God had instructed them to be there, as He had instructed me. They were there for the amusement, but I had arrived for the torture and humiliation that might burn away my sin and misfortune, and perhaps save me. I was there to be tried, sanctified, and rewarded. I was there with a forty-dollar ticket in my hand, with a chance on $600,000.

I stood in the middle of the lobby while the little Creole men scooted around me. I was still tall, despite my wooden leg and vacant sleeve. I had been through the fire before, I thought, I could do it again. My beard had grown long, longer than my official portraits, and had turned gray. I had once entertained the thought of growing my beard so long and thick that my entire face and torso might be obscured and unrecognizable, but I knew it would be futile.
My eyes, damn it.
My eyes were so pale they seemed merely orbs of light in my photographs. I’ve been told that in person they are sad and unmistakable. Don’t know about that.

“Hood!”

I looked around and here came Father Mike and Rintrah, dressed in their work clothes and wearing identical black bowlers.

“Father. Is the Church shutting this gambling den down?”

“Lord, I hope not.”

Rintrah gazed around and commented on the beauty of the lobby. The lobby was repulsive, of course. Decadent. Red carpets and settees the color of blood, fat and cackling angels cavorting above the windows.

“How is the hospital?”

“We’re in bad shape still, John. I don’t know if we can keep going, after this past summer. We have nothing left, the dead took it all.”

“Perhaps the Lord will provide.”

Then Rintrah piped up from under his little black hat.

“Or someone else, maybe! Lady Luck, yes sir!”

“Don’t hold your breath, Rintrah.”

“Around you, always, General.”

We laughed, and then the bell rang for the next drawing, and we parted ways. As they walked off, backs to me and dressed nearly identically, they looked like father and son. I never saw Father Mike again.

I had business to conduct. As I made my way toward the entrance to the great hall, feeling my wooden leg sink deep into the carpet, kicking up puffs of dust, a thin, yellow-faced Creole slid before me and bowed. He was as tall as me, but bent slightly to the side, as if his spine had slipped off center. It forced him to look up at me, even when he had stood up again. His eyes, bloodshot, made me think he might collapse at any moment.

“Monsieur Dauphin begs the honor of your presence in his private room, if you please, Monsieur Hood.”

Monsieur Dauphin? A ridiculous name.

“I am not familiar with Dauphin.”

“Forgive me, Monsieur Hood. He is the organizer.”

“Ah.”

How did he know I was here?
And then,
Silly question.

“Will you accompany me? It is just up these stairs.”

“Yes, I suppose.”

I could escape the indignity of standing among the crowd of onlookers and gamblers, perhaps, by sitting with this Monsieur Dauphin. And so I limped along behind the tall Creole, who stood crooked even when he walked, and looked as if he was always preparing to turn a corner.

The stairs were narrow, and gave me trouble. At the landing, the man waited patiently for me to clunk my way up the stairs. When I had gained the landing, the man folded his hands in front of him, bowed again, and made off down the corridor to a small door. He gestured to me, beckoning me as if calling to a reluctant pet. He was rude in the way that Creoles could seem rude sometimes: presumptuous and brisk.
I could snap this man in two. Or I would have, once.
Instead, I ducked my head through the short doorway and entered the private room of Monsieur Dauphin.

The little man did not remove his hat, but sat with his foot on the railing of the overlook, awkwardly massaging a cigar between his lips. He looked up and smiled, and gestured toward a chair like his. I took it, and leaned my cane against the rail. Below I could hear the burbling and crashing of many voices.

“General Hood, I am sorry if I have surprised you. You don’t know me, but I know much about you.”

Thousands of people knew me, and why wouldn’t the little lottery man be one of them? I sighed a little, and rubbed the inflamed callus where my thigh met the wood of my fake leg.

“May I get you something? A drink, perhaps.”

“No. No thank you.”

“Tea?”

I nodded, despite myself.

“Tea then.” He rapped his knuckles three times against the door and the yellow-faced man appeared. The two whispered in their odd French, and then the servant disappeared.

This was not the kind of situation I liked. I was used to being the one with the information, with the intelligence, the man who possessed the power of knowledge. Now I was no more than a penitent in this man’s house of sin, an entrant into the lion’s den, helpless except for the possibilities contained in the little slip of paper. I patted my breast pocket and assured myself it was there. The tall man returned with the tea in a silver pot, flanked by two chipped porcelain cups. It was too dainty for my taste, but I took it anyway.

“Have you been here before, General Hood?”

“No.”

“You cannot have missed the hoi polloi milling about down there, of course.”

“No.”

“They are fools.”

I almost nodded in agreement, before realizing that the little man might be insulting me. The little man seemed to know what I was thinking.

“You are not a fool, of course. I know of your wager, and your ticket. You have bought one ticket, just one, for a drawing that occurs only twice a year. Most men buy as many chances as they can, but you have only bought one. I am curious. Why? You are not a stupid man.”

I would not tell this stranger of my dreams, of my prayers, of my conviction that I had put my fate into God’s hands and that God would not fail me.

“It was only for amusement, Mr. Dauphin. I have no hope of winning, of course.”

I hope beyond hope that I will win.

“I see. But then, why spend so much, and why wager on the biggest prize? Surely it would be just as entertaining to risk only a little for one of the small prizes. You are not,” he said vehemently, gesturing down at the crowd, “like them. They are dreamy and superstitious men.”

I didn’t answer, and Dauphin broke off his questions.

“Let us take in the spectacle, shall we?” Dauphin said, waving his hand out toward the crowd and the stage at the opposite end of the hall.

A negro, a dark and giant man stripped to his waist, pushed and pulled at the handle of a giant glass wheel while the men at the front of the crowd hooted and urged him on. I noticed how the negro contorted and expanded his body with precision, neither speeding up nor slowing down despite the exhortations of the men who stood close enough to touch the wheel themselves. None of them dared. Off on either side of the stage stood two men with rifles, watching them close. I wondered where they had acquired those rifles, and whether they had been taken to the war, and whether the men carrying them had ever been under my command. This was a notion that often possessed me now, that any man who passed me on the street could have once been subject to my whim, my orders.
Nobody owes me that anymore. Got to quit thinking about it. No one is going to walk into fire for me, not ever again. Hell, it’s damned hard to get a man to cross the street for anything but money. Money is honor now. Money is courage.

I admired the organization of the drawing, the symmetry of the stage, and the discipline of the negro turning the wheel. I was about to congratulate Dauphin on his achievement when the two boys walked out onto the stage. I closed my mouth.

They were young, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, I didn’t know. They wore identical uniforms of blue cotton trousers, white collarless shirts, and heavy black boots.
They look like they can’t barely lift those boots. Why are they so thin?
The two boys moved slowly, at first holding on to each other and grimacing each time the shouts got loud. Finally they lost contact with each other as they stumbled into chairs and tables that seemed to surprise each boy as he fell to the floor.

“Hurry it up, boy, get us our numbers!”

“Who you looking at? Get to work.”

“See your daddy? He just right over there. Right there.”

I recognized the uniforms now, I had seen boys and girls like this around the city every once in a while. When one of the boys turned his face up toward the back of the hall, as if beseeching me for his help, I knew I was right.

The boy’s eyes were, from that distance, almost perfectly white. I knew that if I were closer, I would see the faintest hint of a pupil beneath the haze of whatever foul thing had grown over the boy’s eyes. The boys were blind and had been orphaned because of it.

“Mr. Dauphin, why are there boys from the asylum here?”

“They are here to assure our patrons that the drawing is perfectly square, and unable to be rigged. This is why so many people give us their money, they know that when they lose it they’ll lose it fairly. Why it matters I do not know, but it does.”

“Those boys look like they’re the entertainment.”

“There’s that, too. It is a spectacle, after all.”

I had a mind to beat the little Creole down, but knew this would cause more trouble than I could handle now.
Remember the money
. But I could not let this
spectacle
go unchallenged.

“Do you think they are funny?”

“No.”

“Do you think it is amusing to watch two blind boys stumble and fall over themselves, for no fault of their own?”

“They share some of the blame, as they volunteered for the job. I pay well, and the blind boys at the asylum know this. But no, I do not find it amusing.”

“I believe you think it is funny, sir.”

“I only know that
they
think it is funny,” Dauphin said, sweeping his hand out over the crowd. “And they are everything.”

I massaged my bad arm. Then I was up and on my feet, my coat off, showing the little Creole my stump, pulling up my trouser leg so that he could see the fine wood. I moved so suddenly, Dauphin half leaped over the back of his chair.

“Perhaps
I
should be down there on the stage, sir, giving your patrons their amusement,” I said. “Would this be funny also?”

The little man got control of himself and took his seat, gesturing for me to take mine again. I was on fire, breathing out my nose like a horse, but finally I calmed and took his seat.

“It would not be funny, General Hood.”

“No.”

“But I
have
thought of you on that stage. It’s why I asked you up here.”

*   *   *

The drawing ended for me up in Mr. Dauphin’s overlook with the last number drawn by the blind boys. It wasn’t mine, and when I looked down at it I realized it wouldn’t have mattered anyway: the ticket had disintegrated into a pulpy mush in my hot, tight hand. No salvation. Why should I have expected different? Did I really think God had told me
to gamble
? That God would fix the game for
me
? Why? Why me?
Why, because it’s always for me, isn’t it? The great general! Damned fool. God is not my lieutenant. I have no lieutenants.

I looked out over the rail and watched the gamblers shuffle out of the hall, kicking little clouds of paper into the air as they went. I watched Generals P. G. T. Beauregard and Jubal Early collect up the money that remained, seal it, and carry it together out of the room.

“I believe General Beauregard and General Early will be joining us momentarily,” Dauphin said. “You know them, of course? Yes, I’m sure.”

“I know them both quite well.”

“Well then, a reunion! Wine?”

“I think not.”

Dauphin was silent for a moment. Finally he turned square to me and leaned over, so that we were face-to-face.

“May I be so bold as to talk business, sir?”

“I am a man of business.”

I looked for the smirk, but found none.

“Yes, I know you are a man of business. And thus I feel free to discuss matters with you directly.”

“Proceed.”

“Yes. The generals. Messieurs Beauregard and Early. They are fine men, yes? Men of honor? Respected men? Valiant men?”

They were. And this little man knows nothing of how they were on those battlefields, swords drawn, riding the lines. He does not know how they slept on the ground with their men, how brilliant they were over campaign maps, how bold they were to face death most days, and even in the pit of fear and sorrow and longing for home, how they still rode the lines. They gave men the courage they had even when they had none for themselves. And now they lived in peace and they could not survive.

“I know them both from the war, yes.”

“I employ them, of course. They give the proceedings a certain distinction, the promise of honesty. They are like the blind boys.”

That was the most sensible thing the man had said to me. They were precisely like the blind boys. They were wounded. They were dancing monkeys. They were entertainment. My God, if we had known such men would dance about onstage like harlots, would we have even bothered to fight?

“I pay them thirty thousand dollars a year to appear here, twice a month.”

Perhaps we would have fought harder.

“In addition to their
reputations
, they also are adept at keeping control of the crowd, as you saw.”

There had been a disturbance just before the end of the drawing, but I had been too far away to see much before the crowd collapsed on what I assumed were troublemakers. Disgruntled losers, I thought. The only peculiar thing I had noticed was the pockmarked man moving out of the crowd as everyone else was moving
in
. He had been expressionless.